I am honored to be invited to facilitate a workshop titled Teaching with technology: Basic tools and techniques, July 31-August 2, 2017. This is one of CLEAR‘s summer workshops, held at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI.

In-class response systems

Description: Instructor creates multiple-choice, true-false, or short answer questions. Students respond using laptops or mobile devices. The instructor can display the results as they come in. You can let students respond anonymously or require students to enter their names. You can also use this system for in-class quizzes.

Platform: iPhone, iPad, or Android (only 1 needed per classroom). The website is useful for creating classes, questions, and quizzes, but a mobile device is needed to scan students’ responses.

Description: Students respond to multiple-choice and true-false questions using specially designed paper that they hold up. The teacher scans the room using a smart phone or tablet. The results can be instantly displayed.

Description: Upload video, then use YouTube’s editor to combine, split, and shorten clips and add a soundtrack, titles, and transitions.You need to be logged into your Google account to use this. The mobile app has more limited editing capabilities, but allows you to record video directly in the app.

Description: Create a book using your own images and text, with a simple, user-friendly interface. You can publish a “proof copy” PDF for free, and you can upload your book to the Blurb website to get options to buy a printed copy or ebook. You retain copyright to your book. Does not support Asian languages.

Description: With the free version, record up to 15-minute videos of your screen. You can record from your webcam (or just microphone) at the same time. With the pro version, you can record computer audio (on Windows) and edit your recordings.

Description: plug-in for PowerPoint for creating narrated presentations that can be saved as videos. You can also include quiz questions. You need Office 2013 or later and Windows 7 or later to use this plug-in.

Delivery of content

Description: Create a website and/or blog. Use various free themes to change the look of your site, and add in your own content with an editor that is similar to a word processor. No HTML or web programming skills needed.

Tip: Add /wp-admin/index.php to the end of your URL to access a more useful interface for editing your site! For example, if your site is mysite.wordpress.com, use the URL mysite.wordpress.com/wp-admin/index.php to access the editing interface.

Customizable games

Description: Create multiple choice games (“Quizzes”) and ordering games (“Jumbles”) for competition in class. Students respond individually or in teams on their own devices. This colorful game is very popular in K-12 contexts.

Description: Create flashcards that include images and automatically generated audio. Play games and take tests with the words. With a paid account, teachers can also facilitate team games using the flashcard sets.

Platform: Web, with a browser plugin (mobile apps have a subscription fee)

Description: Save all of your usernames and passwords in one place. This app also generates secure passwords for you and saves you the trouble of remembering them. This helps keep your data secure by avoiding the reuse of passwords across websites.

Language exchange

Students or teachers can use the following free sites to set up individual or classroom exchanges. Keep in mind that this is an exchange, so they would need to speak English for half of the exchange time and the TL for the other half.

Description: Students can use this site to find a language exchange partner, or teachers can use the site to find a collaborating class. The Mixxer has tools for students to request confirmation to be sent to teachers to show that they participated in an exchange.

Teletandem Brasil – Set up language exchanges between your Portuguese class and Brazilian classes learning English

TalkAbroad – A paid service that includes tools for teachers to give instructions to conversations partners in advance. Students pay a fee per 30 minute conversation. Both teachers and students can access recordings of conversations. Available for Spanish, French, English, Mandarin, Arabic, German, Italian, and Portuguese.

Glossing

Rikaichan/Rikaikun/Rikaigu – plugin for Firefox/Chrome browsers that produces a popup box showing the meaning & reading of Japanese words

ESL listening passages and 5-question “quizzes” (comprehension Qs); students can check own answers; some support activities too: http://esl-lab.com/

ESL listening passages from authentic sources, with short comprehension questions; students can check score and re-do if desired; students can send score to instructor: http://eslvideo.com/
– Warning: Anyone can post a video + activity here, so watch for grammar/vocabulary/format errors.

Reminder of a great language MOOC for language material, audio, visual, other activities. While these are courses, there is no grade or fee.
Go to Oli.cmu.edu
Click on “Learn with OLI” left corner.
Click “See our open +free courses”
Scroll to desired course. Click.
Enter course on the right hand side. (Open + Free)